posted on
Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:
News and Analysis
In many ways, education reform initiatives have become like boy bands from the 1990s. They’ll score one Billboard hit and then fade away into obscurity. Take something like small schools. For a while, everyone hailed the approach as the solution to all of our education woes. But within a few years, the reform strategy had been tabled as reformers moved to the next Big Thing. (Real Clear Education)
The governing board for NAEP concludes in a new analysis that only 39 percent of 12th graders are prepared for entry-level college courses in math and just 38 percent are ready in reading. (Education Week)
New Jersey
In a rancorous mayoral campaign that often revolved around the future of public schooling in New Jersey’s biggest city, Newark voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly favored city councilor and former high school principal Ras Baraka over Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights lawyer who chaired the city’s school advisory committee. (Education Week)
Three years ago Facebook’s CEO pledged $100 million to improve Newark’s schools. In this week’s New Yorker, Dale Russakoff offers an enlightening and depressing portrait of how that money was spent and what it achieved. The story is a welcome corrective to the bromide that “government should be run like a business”—as though business is some unassailable fortress of morality. (The Atlantic)
New York
When Mayor Bill de Blasio held a news conference on Monday touting his recent educational budget commitments, he highlighted additional money he will spend on arts programs ($20 million), after-school activities for middle schools ($145 million) and his signature proposal, universal pre-kindergarten ($300 million). (Capital New York)